How to Get Through the Next Four Years

 

by Russell Moore

November 13, 2024

“The nonstop news cycle will be crazy. You don’t have to be.”

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Bravo! to Russell Moore for some well-thought and convicting advice for all Christians in this country, and those affected by our country outside our country. We know how this song goes, but we also know how to better respond and behave in the years ahead. I anticipate a lot of change is coming, like in the 1960’s. History doesn’t always repeat, but it sure rhymes and that should bring peace to our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirit as we prepare to be better salt and light in this world which we are not to be of any longer.

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     “Someone walked up to me in an airport last week and said, “So, what do you think about the election?” I was in a less-than-ideal mood at the moment, for reasons that had nothing to do with the election, but I stopped myself from saying sarcastically, “What do you think I think about the election?”

     The last thing I wanted to talk about, after ten years of talking about him, was Donald Trump. Now the news cycle will be the Donald Trump Show all day, every day, for four more years.

The nonstop news cycle and drama won’t be some unforeseen circumstance. It’s what the American people voted for. The theory that people would want to “turn the page” on all that, offered by Vice President Kamala Harris, proved false. Turns out most people liked the drama just fine. So here we go.

      I have very little to say that I haven’t already said, very little to write that I haven’t already written, and there are very few people who think like I do. I can’t control that. But neither can you. As a matter of fact, there is very little any of us can do to control the next four years—with a news cycle that will be, like the last near-decade, all Trump, all the time.

     Just like during the last near-decade, those who support Trump and those who oppose him will continue to look at one another the way Adams and Jefferson did over the French Revolution: “How could you support (or not support) that?” You can control very little of that either.

 

And that’s surprisingly good news.

 

The passivity of Americans in their own civic order is always a problem. The word woke—before it became associated with identity politics—spoke to the sense of waking people from their slumber about injustice. The opposite of passivity, though, is often not responsibility or engagement. Sometimes it’s a kind of passivity that feels like “doing something.”

     Wherever someone falls on the political spectrum, that’s where “doomscrolling” comes into play. We feel we are informed by having a steady stream of drama in front of us, our emotions driven up or down by the news cycle.

    We’ve seen the end result of that. The constant flow of (real and fake) information spikes our adrenaline, activating our “lizard brains.” We throw our limbic systems into the sense of having to support or to oppose something—when, much of the time, there’s actually nothing we can do about it. And this works because many people like it.

     What we call “politics” these days offers people a sense of meaning and purpose, an interruption to the dead everydayness of life. A jolt of adrenaline can feel almost like life—for a little while.

This kind of political “drama” is related to actual political life the way that pornography is to intimacy. Porn gives the same physical sensation as sexual union. The nervous system responds the way it is meant to respond in the union of a husband and wife; it just does so by getting rid of the love, the connection, the other person. In other words, it gives the physical sense without what actually brings about the joy.

     Someone might think that porn use will kick-start their flagging passion, that it’s a temporary step toward intimacy. That person is left, though, feeling deader and lonelier than before. A news cycle can be like that too—ultimately leaving people not more informed and thoughtful but with worn-out attention spans and burned-out expectations.

     One of the things you owe your country is your attention. By that, I do not mean your constant focus. I mean, quite literally, your attention: your ability to think and to reflect apart from the roar of the mob.

     During the tumult of the 1960s—war, civil unrest, assassinations—Thomas Merton argued that his ability to speak to all of those things was not in spite of but because of his vocation as a Trappist monk, devoted to silence and solitude.

     “Someone has to try to keep his head clear of static and preserve the interior solitude and silence that are essential for independent thought,” Merton wrote. He continues, A monk loses his reason for existing if he simply submits to all the routines that govern the thinking of everybody else. He loses his reason for existing if he simply substitutes other routines of his own! He is obliged by his vocation to have his own mind if not to speak it. He has got to be a free man. Merton concludes by saying, “What did the radio say this evening? I don’t know.” 

     I believe in the priesthood of all believers and, in this way, I suppose, in the monkhood of all believers too. News and information are important in helping a free and attentive mind discern what’s happening and how to make sense of it. News and information as sources of a sense of personal “drama” or belonging, though, will fray your attention, scatter your thinking, and affix you to whatever mob it’s easiest to mimic. It’s hard to maintain sanity with a mind like that. It’s hard to love your country with a mind like that. It’s hard to love the Lord your God with a mind like that.

     The stakes are too high for us to see our country as a reality television show. You can’t opt out of the country, but you can opt out of the show. In some ways, you get there by subtraction. Don’t rely on social media for your news, for instance. Don’t fall into the trap of every-ten-minute hits of dopamine about how your side is losing something or winning something.

     But maybe an even more important factor is not subtraction but addition. You are meant to have a life of drama and adventure and excitement. Politics—of the left, right, or center—can’t deliver it. News cycles can’t replicate it.

     For those of us who are Christians, we already have it. We need no Jungian hero’s journey. We are joined to the life of Jesus of Nazareth. His story is our story. Our lives are hidden in him (Col. 3:3). We are crucified under Pontius Pilate. We are raised out of the grave. We are seated at the right hand of the Father.

     All of that is true, right now, for those who are joined by the Spirit to the life of Christ. And we are waiting a trump—not a Trump—to tell us when the action of our lives will really get interesting, in ways we cannot even imagine yet.

     Realize that this is true for you. You don’t need to be part of some make-believe drama. You don’t need to adopt some politician as a father figure. You have an actual Father who is making plans for you. And when you realize how temporary, how fleeting, and how pitiful much of what is counted as glory is in this moment, you can learn how to love it without placing on it the burden of making you happy or driving you crazy. We always come to hate our idols—whatever they are—because they never give us what we want.

     That means you will need the Bible—and more than just the devotional cherry-picking or doctrinal proof texts to which modern American Christianity is accustomed. You will need to immerse yourself in the stories there until you gradually start to sense they are your stories. You need to plunge into the poems and songs there until you find they are telling you the story of your own life too. 

     You need to spend enough time with the Jesus found in the pages of Scripture that he starts to surprise you again. You don’t have to understand what you’re reading all the time. Read it anyway. Let the Word do its work. Don’t immediately Google “How to understand Psalm 46” or “What does Colossians 2 mean?” Wrestle with it. Be baffled by it.

     And sooner or later you will start to hear, as though calling to you personally from those words: “Who do you say that I am?”

 

The news cycle will be crazy for the next four years. You don’t have to be.

 

https://www.christianitytoday.com/2024/11/next-four-years-donald-trump-russell-moore-election-2024/

 

 
 
 

The Day I Discovered an African American Theologian

"Plain Theology for Plain People" by Charles Octavius Boothe

By Walter R. Strickland II

March 7, 2018  

History is recounted by the wealthy and powerful. Throughout America’s history of racism, slavery and segregation prohibited blacks from being protagonists in the Christian narrative. For example, there is often mention of Jonathan Edwards and John Frame in the American Christian story, but rarely an acknowledgment of John Chavis or John Jasper. In general, the American Christian story told in most evangelical college and seminary classrooms include African Americans as marginal characters and only in relation to the dominant culture.

This results in false perceptions of God’s work—namely, that God primarily works through the wealthy and powerful. People assume that the white protagonists have everything to teach and little to learn from those who have been excluded. Learning about historical figures like African-American pastor Charles Octavius Boothe (1845–1924) not only shows God at work outside the dominant culture, but it also exalts Christ as the redeemer of every ethné.

Who Is Charles Octavius Boothe?

Boothe was born on June 13, 1845, in Mobile County, Alabama, as the legal property of Nathaniel Howard. At the age of 3, Boothe learned the alphabet from lettering on a tin plate. At 14, he was sold to attorney James S. Terrel, and he began working as an office boy at a law firm in Clark County, Mississippi.

Mid-19th-century legal practice was rooted in biblical logic, which required young Boothe to explore Scripture on a regular basis. Over time, his exposure to Scripture drew him to salvation. In 1860 he testified that he “reached an experience of grace which so strengthened me as to fix me on the side of God’s people.”

At the conclusion of the Civil War, Boothe’s passion was racial uplift in a society that denied blacks’ humanity before God and the Constitution. At the age of 22, Boothe began teaching for the Freedmen’s Bureau and lecturing regularly at Booker T. Washington’s famed Tuskegee Institute. In the early 1870s, Boothe was a preliminary member of the Colored Baptist Missionary Convention that founded Selma University. He later served as the university’s second president (1901–02). Boothe desired to promote literacy so former slaves could read the Bible for themselves and escape the oppressive interpretative practices that had made the Christian faith a tool of black subservience.

Boothe’s devotion for education notwithstanding, he was, most importantly, a churchman. He established and ministered in two churches: First Colored Baptist Church of Meridian, Mississippi, and Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. (In recent decades, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church received international attention because of its role in the civil-rights struggle and the leadership of its 20th pastor, Martin Luther King Jr., after whom the church was renamed—King Memorial Baptist Church.)

While in the pastorate, Boothe maintained an itinerant teaching ministry, conducting literacy and theological training for emancipated slaves and their children. He wrote Plain Theology for Plain People as an aid for his theological seminars. Writing with the average sharecropper in mind, Boothe set out to spare others the frustration of traversing the lofty theological rhetoric of other texts. His book provides a definite system of organization while allowing simplicity of language and structure to prevail. It wasn’t until my doctoral studies that I discovered Plain Theology for Plain People.[1]

Boothe’s Significance for Me

My theological education offered me a love for Scripture and a theological framework, but it unintentionally taught me that people of color have little to contribute to theological discussions. I had well-intended white professors who assigned white authors and invited white guest lecturers. In order to become more like my Caucasian professors, I began to squelch everything in me that didn’t correspond to them in order to do “real theology.” I began stripping away my blackness in order to fit the evangelical theological mold. At that time, I only entertained theological inquiry that emerged from culturally white space; I developed a bias against African-American theologians; and I belittled the rich heritage of the black church. I was miserable.

But when I encountered Boothe’s writing, it helped me resist the assumption that whiteness equals faithfulness, and it granted me freedom to be instructed by believers outside of my racial and cultural background without feeling like I needed to lose parts of myself in the process.

Plain Theology for Plain People is significant for my story, and it should influence the evangelical approach to theology.

Boothe for Evangelicalism

Boothe demonstrates that theology can emerge from various contexts. In evangelical circles, however, certain contexts have been given almost exclusive priority. Formal theology has been disproportionately conducted by white men, and their perspective has been standardized. Thus “well-read” evangelicals can gain that label despite never interacting with theologically faithful traditions outside the dominant evangelical culture.

By normalizing a particular context, issues that arise outside of that context are often dismissed as illegitimate. In fact, theological development from non-white contexts are often only deemed “proper” when they engage issues pertinent to white culture and conform to “authorized” conclusions. This explains why issues that disproportionately affect non-white communities—like systemic injustice, racial oppression, economic inequality, and human rights—have received scattered engagement among evangelical theologians and ethicists.

The reality of white cultural dominance in evangelical spaces is consistent with what we know to be true of fallen humanity—we’re self-interested creatures. All people (white and non-white alike) are interested in the issues most pressing to us and aren’t likely to deeply contemplate the circumstances of another. So cultivating diverse church communities is important, since it necessarily expands our concerns beyond our experience.

Reimagining the evangelical tradition to include voices that have been obscured isn’t just good for marginalized Christians—it’s good for all Christians. Theology from every context offers valuable contributions. The mature theologian takes his or her seat at the table of theological discourse and both enriches and is enriched by the exchange. Different perspectives taken together embody a more robust vision of faithfulness and affection for Christ than they could ever manage alone.

PS - "To be clear, this was not the first time that I discovered any African-American theologian, but it was the first time I discovered Boothe."

Source: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/day-i-discovered-african-american-theologian/

4 ways doctrine impacts every day of my life (and why the church needs it)

THEOLOGY IS MORE PRACTICAL THAN WE OFTEN REALIZE

By Scott Slayton

Recently I was in a restaurant and a Bible study group was meeting at a nearby table. The leader had a voice that carried, so I could have heard a good portion of the study, but the first thing I heard him say so captured my attention that I missed the rest of it. He said, “I love non-denominational churches because doctrine is not life-giving.”

I will set aside the comment about non-denominational churches not having a doctrine for another day. It was the other half of the sentence that knocked me out of my chair. “Doctrine is not life-giving.” I cannot think of anything more life-giving than sound doctrine.

“Doctrine” is a biblical word and the Apostle Paul shows us that sound doctrine is a good thing we should embrace. After all, “doctrine” refers to teaching and “sound” means something is healthy. Sound doctrine is a shorthand way of saying that teaching is healthy and good for us. This means it corresponds to what is true about God, life, and the world.

Sound doctrine is good for followers of Jesus. We need to know the truth, which means we must study the truth.

Here are three reasons you should commit to understanding good theology.

1. STUDY THEOLOGY FOR YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Every relationship is based on knowing and understanding each other. Since God knows and understands us perfectly, it is imperative for us to continue learning about who he is. Thankfully, God revealed everything we need to know about him in the Scriptures.

When we read and study theology, we come to a better grasp of God’s personal attributes and how he interacts with the world. We see how God revealed himself in the past through encounters with men and women in Scripture. For example, when he passed by Moses in Exodus 34, he proclaimed about himself, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” You cannot learn that about God by looking at a sunset. Also, think about his interactions with Job in the closing chapters of the book that bears his name. There, we learn that God is all powerful, has no competitors, yet is gracious and restores those who have been broken.

God also reveals his character through the teaching of the apostles and prophets. When we read Jeremiah 2 or Romans 8:28-39, we hear men inspired by the Spirit testifying to the attributes of the God who revealed himself to them. We learn about the justice, mercy, love, providence, sovereignty, righteousness, and grace of God from these letters and speeches.

In addition to reading the Scriptures, studying theology means reading books by solid authors who help us to better understand the Scriptures. While some might object to this as “the teachings of men,” if they shed light on the truth about God, good books are a chance to learn about our Father from brothers or sisters who have been walking with Jesus and studying the Bible longer and in greater depth than we have been.

2. STUDY THEOLOGY FOR YOUR GROWTH IN GRACE

Too often, Christian pit theological teaching against “practical” teaching. We know the problems we face in our lives and think that theology is ivory tower thinking that has little to do with solving real problems. We imagine that we can get the help we need for our lives from the Bible while avoiding the difficult thinking that comes along with theology.

The difficulty we run into is that most of the solutions to our “practical” problems are rooted in theological truths. How do you know how to love difficult people? The Bible tells us that we learn this by walking in love “as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.”(Ephesians 5:2) Paul roots something as practical as love in something as deeply theological as Jesus’ substitutionary death for us.

Paul does this in other ways as well. When he wants to show husbands how to love their wives, he points again to the death of Jesus. “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” (Ephesians 5:25) To show Christians why they should put sin to death, Paul reminds Christians of their union with Christ. (Romans 6:1-14) When he encourages Christians to forgive, he announces that God forgave them. (Ephesians 4:32)Theology is crucial to practical Christian living.

3. STUDY THEOLOGY FOR YOUR GOSPEL CONVERSATIONS

We want to see the gospel go forward and for more people to hear about and believe in Jesus. This means that we need to have more conversations about the gospel with people who do not yet believe. How are we going to have these conversations if we do not know and understand theology?

There was a popular “Christian” song in the late 1990’s titled, “Jesus Saves.” The gist of the song was that we don’t need to confuse people with weighty theology. We just need to tell them that “Jesus saves.” Sounds simple enough, but what if they ask “Who is Jesus?” or “What does Jesus save me from?” Now you find yourself in a theological conversation and you need good answers to those questions.

Many conversations about the gospel with people who don’t believe will involve dealing with objections to the gospel message. You can answer these questions superficially or you can do the hard work of helping people to get to the root of their doubts. Every objection to the gospel involves some aspect of theology. If they object that hell is cruel, you’ll need to talk about the holiness and justice of God. If someone wants to know why he can’t just be a good person, you’ll have to explain the righteousness of Christ and salvation by faith alone. These are theological discussions, but they make a deep impact.

4. STUDYING THEOLOGY LED TO MY CONVERSION

I was a youth pastor when I realized I needed to be saved. To make a long story short, I made a profession of faith at a youth camp in middle school, immediately ran back to the things of the world, and through a series of difficult events started going to church again. I fell in love with the Bible and was convinced I should be a pastor.

While I was a theology student at a Christian college and a youth pastor at a local church, I started to doubt the reality of my profession of faith. Through this, I started reading about sin, salvation by faith alone, election, and the new birth. I came under intense conviction and slowly realized that I had never been saved.

The night it all came to a head, I asked myself what I would say to God if I stood before him on the last day. My answer started with everything I had tried to do in his name. In my heart, I realized my answer was rooted in a trust in my own righteousness and called upon Christ alone to save me.

Memorizing 2 Corinthians 5:17 and Ephesians 2:8-10 and thinking about important theological issues through the lens of my own crisis of faith led to my conversion. No one will ever convince me that theology is not important, soul-saving, or life-giving.

Theology is simply the way that we explain who God is, who we are, what is wrong with the world, what God has done to redeem us, and the future hope we look forward to. Studying and understanding theology will give every Christian a deeper love for God, a stronger walk with him, a greater love for the people around us, a stronger commitment to our local church, and an increased confidence in the message of the gospel as we talk to people who need to hear it.

Source: http://equip.sbts.edu/article/4-ways-doctrine-impacts-every-day-life-church-needs/

Christian Doctrinal Statement

Spelling out the Christian  Faith:

Doctrinal Statement

We affirm our belief in one God, infinite Spirit, creator, and sustainer of all things, who exists eternally in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. These three are one in essence but distinct in person and function.

We affirm that the Father is the first person of the Trinity and the source of all that God is and does. From Him the Son is eternally generated and from Them the Spirit eternally proceeds. He is the designer of creation, the speaker of revelation, the author of redemption, and the sovereign of history.

We affirm that the Lord Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity, eternally begotten from the Father. He is God. He was conceived by the Virgin Mary through a miracle of the Holy Spirit. He lives forever as perfect God and perfect man: two distinct natures inseparably united in one person.

We affirm that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, proceeding from the Father and the Son and equal in deity. He is the giver of all life, active in the creating and ordering of the universe; He is the agent of inspiration and the new birth; He restrains sin and Satan; and He indwells and sanctifies all believers.

We affirm that God created all things. Angels were created as ministering agents, though some, under the leadership of Satan, fell from their sinless state to become agents of evil. The universe was created in six historical days and is continuously sustained by God; thus it both reflects His glory and reveals His truth. Human beings were directly created, not evolved, in the very image of God. As reasoning moral agents, they are responsible under God for understanding and governing themselves and the world.

We affirm that the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, though written by men, was supernaturally inspired by God so that all its words are the written true revelation of God; it is therefore inerrant in the originals and authoritative in all matters. It is to be understood by all through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, its meaning determined by the historical, grammatical, and literary use of the author’s language, comparing Scripture with Scripture.

We affirm that Adam, the first man, willfully disobeyed God, bringing sin and death into the world. As a result, all persons are sinners from conception, which is evidenced in their willful acts of sin; and they are therefore subject to eternal punishment, under the just condemnation of a holy God.

We affirm that Jesus Christ offered Himself as a sacrifice by the appointment of the Father. He fulfilled the demands of God by His obedient life, died on the cross in full substitution and payment for the sins of all, was buried, and on the third day He arose physically and bodily from the dead. He ascended into heaven where He now intercedes for all believers.

We affirm that each person can be saved only through the work of Jesus Christ, through repentance of sin and by faith alone in Him as Savior. The believer is declared righteous, born again by the Holy Spirit, turned from sin, and assured of heaven.

We affirm that the Holy Spirit indwells all who are born again, conforming them to the likeness of Jesus Christ. This is a process completed only in Heaven. Every believer is responsible to live in obedience to the Word of God in separation from sin.

We affirm that a church is a local assembly of baptized believers, under the discipline of the Word of God and the lordship of Christ, organized to carry out the commission to evangelize, to teach, and to administer the ordinances of believer’s baptism and the Lord’s Table. Its offices are pastors and deacons, and it is self-governing. It functions through the ministry of gifts given by the Holy Spirit to each believer.

We affirm that the return of Christ for all believers is imminent. It will be followed by seven years of great tribulation, and then the coming of Christ to establish His earthly kingdom for a thousand years. The unsaved will then be raised and judged according to their works and separated forever from God in hell. The saved, having been raised, will live forever in heaven in fellowship with God.

Source: Liberty University Doctrinal Statement